The Burning Man (30 page)

“Yes!” Kieran said with a little fist pump.

“Don’t start celebrating now,” Olivia said, pointing to a shifting network of cracks forming all around the doorway. “We’re not out of here yet.”

Kieran looked around the massive underground parking area, scanning the rows of cars.

“I can’t figure out where we are,” he said. “But this definitely isn’t the same stairway I used before. I think we’re all the way on the other side of the building.” Futility reflected in his expression. “Hell, I don’t even know if this is the same floor where I parked the truck.”

“Well then, we better start looking for another car,” Olivia said running to the nearest row of vehicles and trying one locked handle after the other.

“Even if we find one that’s unlocked,” Kieran said, his voice tight and panicky, “how are we supposed to start it? Do you know how to hotwire a car? Because I sure as hell don’t!”

“Stay frosty,” Olivia said. “We just need to...”

Before she could finish her sentence, a massive tremor rocked the building. More cracks spider-webbed across the low concrete ceiling, and chunks rained down all around them, some the size of hailstones, others as big as softballs.

“We have to get out now,” Olivia said, hands over her head as she sprinted toward the ramp at the far end of the garage. “Run!”

She made it to the ramp in seconds, and turned back to find that Kieran wasn’t behind her. He was more than halfway down the row of cars, doubled over and gasping with his hands on his knees.

She ran to his side, and put an arm around his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” she asked, terrified that he wasn’t.

“Peachy,” he said with a shaky smile that confirmed Olivia’s worst fears.

“Where are your meds?” Olivia asked.

“In my backpack,” he said.

“What backpack?” Olivia asked.

“The one on the passenger seat of the truck,” Kieran said with a rueful smile.

“Are you crazy? You know you’re never supposed to go anywhere without your meds!”

“Yeah, well...” Kieran shrugged. “I guess I had other things on my mind.”

“Well, you can’t rescue anyone if you drop dead,” Olivia said, her worry causing her tone to come off harsher than she intended. She deliberately softened her voice and took him by the arm. “Come on, we need to find that truck.”

* * *

They had to go agonizingly slow, and Kieran kept having to stop to catch his breath. It was freezing cold in the unheated garage, and Olivia shivered beneath the thin hospital gown. Her bare feet were nearly frozen.

The roof over by the stairwell collapsed, and large slabs of concrete came crashing down all around them. If they didn’t find that truck soon, they’d never make it out of there alive.

“Look,” Kieran said, once they’d traveled the entire length of the structure. “I don’t think it’s on this level.”

“You’re right,” Olivia said, dodging a toaster-sized hunk of concrete with a crooked length of rebar sticking out like a spear. “Look, that ramp leads up to another level. Can you make it?”

“No problem,” Kieran replied. She had a feeling he was lying.

They walked up the ramp, while behind them, the lower parking level was swiftly blocked by a collapsed roof. But the upper level was pure chaos, packed with panicked people trying to get to their cars. The driveways were jammed, everyone honking and swearing out their open windows. Emergency personnel were struggling to help people evacuate on foot, and move people who were injured.

Olivia spotted the SpeedyShip truck almost immediately.

“There,” she said. “Hurry!”

When they got to the truck, Kieran grabbed his backpack and his own coat. He took the time to put his coat over Olivia’s shoulders before digging out his meds.

“We can’t drive out of here,” Kieran said, dry swallowing a pill. “We’d better go on foot.”

“I can’t,” Olivia said. “I have no shoes. I’ll freeze to death out there!” She paused for a moment, then said, “You go.”

“Like hell,” he answered.

Up at the top of the exit ramp, a white SUV had just reached the exit when a sedan rammed into it from behind. The driver, a pudgy young man in a stained lab coat, got out of the SUV and—to Olivia’s surprise— hauled the older Asian man out from behind the wheel of the car and starting belting him with wild haymakers.

Emergency personnel ran to split up the fight and the chubby guy went wild, screaming and flailing and headbutting a firefighter so that his helmet flew off.

“Let’s go,” Kieran said, suddenly lunging into action and pulling Olivia with him toward the still-running SUV.

Olivia realized what he had in mind and silently cheered. The fight had spread down the ramp, and panicked people were shoving and stampeding wildly all around them. When they got to the SUV, Kieran flung open the passenger-side door, shoved Olivia in, and tossed his backpack into her lap, then got in behind the wheel.

People dove out of their way as Kieran punched it and roared up the ramp, then out into the driveway. He had to swerve several times, barely missing an incoming emergency response vehicle and two parked fire engines.

Just as he made it out onto Red Oak Road, the left wing of the building shuddered and bowed outward, and then came crashing down in a vortex of dust and flying paper.

Kieran and Olivia drove for several hours without stopping, trying to put as many miles as they could between them and Potsdam.

Finally, they stopped at a department store on the way to pick up some clothes, shoes, and a coat for Olivia. Fully dressed in normal things for the first time in ages, she started to feel like a person again.

She felt free.

“What do you think was really going on back there?” Kieran asked as he pulled out of the store parking lot.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Olivia replied, turning her face to stare out the dark window at nothing. “The part I just can’t figure out is, why me? Why did Doctor Lansen want me?”

“Do you have... you know, powers?” Kieran asked. “Like that crazy chick?”

“Of course not,” Olivia replied. “And if you would have asked me a month ago if I thought that kind of thing existed at all, I would have laughed in your face. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Maybe that black stuff Doctor Lansen was trying to inject you with has something to do with it,” Kieran suggested. “Like maybe that was some kind of formula to activate psychic abilities in the brains of his subjects.”

“But what was the deal with the babies?” Olivia asked, shuddering at the memory of all those bottled stillbirths.

“I’m just glad I got you out of there before you had a chance to find out for yourself,” Kieran said, reaching across the seat and taking her hand.

They planned to make it to Albany, but by the time they reached Schenectady, they were both utterly exhausted. They found a forgettable franchise hotel called the Co-Z Inn, and while she waited in the car, Kieran checked-in using the credit card his mom had given him.

Their room was on the far end of the second floor, with an uninspiring view of the highway.

They’d been there for several minutes before it fully dawned on Olivia that she was alone in a hotel room with a boy.

“Well,” she said pointlessly, but she didn’t have any idea what to say next.

“You can have the bed,” Kieran said, suddenly flushed and his head bowed.

“What, are you gonna sleep on—the floor?” Olivia asked.

“I thought...” he shrugged with a crooked smile. “I don’t know.”

“I have a rule,” Olivia said, a smile of her own blossoming across her lips. “Anybody who saves my life gets to sleep with me.”

Kieran looked up at her.

“Sleep with you?” he asked, looking back at the bed. “Or, you know...
sleep
with you?”

Instead of answering, Olivia kissed him.

At first he seemed almost flabbergasted by this turn of events, shoulders hunched and hands up and open. But moments later, he had his arms wound tight around her and was kissing her back like his life depended on it.

She pulled him toward the bed and then shoved him down on his back. He bounced comically on the springy mattress, causing one of the pillows to fall off the side.

“Wow,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “I guess I’m still feeling a little shaky.”

“Then I’d better be on top,” Olivia replied, pulling her brand new T-shirt off over her head.

* * *

Afterward, he lay with his head on her chest for a few quiet minutes.

“Are you thirsty?” he asked, tracing the shape of her jaw with his fingertips. “I think I saw a soda machine out in the hall.”

“Actually,” she said. “I’d love a glass of water.”

“Cheap date,” he said, getting up and pulling on his boxer shorts. He padded over to the bathroom, and Olivia watched him peel the paper wrapper off a drinking glass then fill it from the tap. He took a deep drink himself, and then refilled it and brought it back to her.

“Thanks,” she said, sitting up in bed to take the glass, and feeling suddenly shy and awkward.

She drank the water and handed the glass back to Kieran. He took it and looked down at it, as if it held some kind of important clue. Neither one of them spoke for several long seconds.

“Come back to bed,” Olivia said, reaching out to touch his sharp hipbone where it poked above the boxers’ elastic waistband.

“Okay,” he said, setting the glass on the bedside table and sliding his legs under the covers beside her. Instead of lying down, though, he remained sitting up and turned toward her, slipping one arm around her waist and pulling her close.

“I guess you know how bad I wanted this to happen,” Kieran said. “I mean, not you getting kidnapped and everything.”

Olivia laughed and shook her head.

“I know what you mean,” she said.

She kissed him lightly and pushed his tangled hair back from his face.

“I...” He was flushed, jaw clenched, and his gaze dropped to the left. “I think I love you. I mean, I
know
I do.” He looked up at her, eyes raw and vulnerable. “I love you, Liv.”

Olivia felt her breath catch, her heart beating way too fast. She knew she was supposed to say it back to him, but those three little words felt so loaded, so serious. The kind of thing that, once said, couldn’t be taken back.

She’d never said those words to anyone but Rachel and her late parents, and they seemed so different now, suddenly layered with complicated nuance and meaning. Like magic words you say to open the doorway to a mysterious new world.

She thought again of Rachel, who claimed to be in love with a different boy every day of the week and tossed those words around like heart-shaped confetti. Why couldn’t she be like that?

Why did everything have to be so serious all the time?

Besides, she was fairly certain that she was in love with Kieran, and had been even before he rescued her. Looking into his familiar eyes and seeing such open, guileless trust made her feel safer than she’d felt since her father died. So why did she feel so conflicted? Why did working up the nerve feel like jumping off a building?

Guess that’s why they call it “falling in love.”

Just jump,
she thought.

“I love you, too,” she said.

He took her face between his hands and kissed her a little too hard. As she kissed him back, she felt some deep inner floodgate open, unleashing a deluge of overpowering emotion.

She broke the kiss and looked up into his eyes, placing her hand in the center of his bare chest.

That’s when it happened.

It started with the baby-fine hairs on her forearm prickling and standing up as a crackle of static shot through the cheap polyester comforter beneath her. The overhead light flickered and Kieran frowned, lips twisting into a grimace as he reached up and put his hand over hers, clutching at his chest.

“Kieran?” she said, cold fear surging through her veins. “Kieran what’s wrong? Is it your heart?”

His mouth moved, but nothing came out. His shoulders hunched down, spine curling inward as veins bulged in his temples.

“Hang on!” She pulled her hand free from his iron grip and ran to his backpack, unzipping it and frantically pawing through the contents. “Hang on, Kieran!”

When her desperate fingers closed around the orange pill bottle, she turned back to Kieran and he was no longer on the bed. She ran around the side and found him lying on his side on the scratchy carpet, unmoving.

He wasn’t breathing.

“No,” she said, pill bottle dropping from her numb fingers as she ran to him. “Jesus, no.”

She grabbed the phone and dialed the front desk.

“Call 911,” she said, her voice sounding much calmer than she felt. “My boyfriend had a heart attack. Room 207. Tell the paramedics I’ve started CPR.”

She hung up the phone without waiting for a response, and rolled the unresponsive Kieran over on his back to begin chest compressions.

She had completely forgotten about her broken arm.

Unable to perform the standard, two-handed compressions, but with no time to lose, Olivia stood over him and put her full body weight behind her right hand, like she was doing one-armed push-ups on his sternum. It worked at first, but the strength and energy required to maintain the correct pace was exhausting, and she could feel herself getting winded less than a minute into the effort.

But she couldn’t give up on him.

She had to keep going no matter what.

Yet panic was winning. She tried to keep it at bay, but she could feel it gaining the upper hand, devouring her from the inside out. Fear and love and anxiety and anguish and a thousand other unnamed emotions swarmed inside of her like angry hornets as Kieran remained inert and lifeless. Her one hand just wasn’t strong enough, and her recently healed ribs began to send sharp jolts of painful protest through her body.

She had to come up with another idea, but she was afraid that he would die if she stopped. Somewhere, someone was chanting breathlessly, “No... no... no... no...” She desperately wished they would stop, and then realization dawned.

It was coming from her.